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$782k over asking for a house in Sunnyvale

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Re: $782k over asking for a house in Sunnyvale

#3
Working at a huge tech company like Google or Facebook is attractive to me, but not enough to justify spending $2.5M on a smaller house, or 12x more per square foot. And this is just in Phoenix. I know there are other places with tech jobs and much lower cost of living, or better income-to-COL ratios.

Re: $782k over asking for a house in Sunnyvale

#5
Aside: I don't think it should be legal to not accept the asking price for a home. With any other thing I want to buy, if I agree to pay the list price I get the item. Sometimes I can haggle the price down but the listed price is always accepted.

This system of listing a price to 'get people in the door' and then igniting a bidding war makes it impossible for anyone to shop for a house except for realtors who are 'in the know' and can tell you the real price based on listing.

Re: $782k over asking for a house in Sunnyvale

#6

Working at a huge tech company like Google or Facebook is attractive to me, but not enough to justify spending $2.5M on a smaller house, or 12x more per square foot. And this is just in Phoenix. I know there are other places with tech jobs and much lower cost of living, or better income-to-COL ratios.

I imagine the calculation is more like risking $1 million out of several million of assets.

There is always the potential for a crash in the housing market, but it can also end up that the $2.5 million is a winning investment (as compared to being spent).

Re: $782k over asking for a house in Sunnyvale

#7
Yes South Bay is so overpriced right now it’s ridiculous. Keep in mind that 5 years ago that same house would have sold for 650k and even then people would have been complaining that’s it was way overpriced.

One things certain, east bay across the 84 is still under a million at the moment. I suspect that will change soon.

Re: $782k over asking for a house in Sunnyvale

#9
post #5

Aside: I don't think it should be legal to not accept the asking price for a home. With any other thing I want to buy, if I agree to pay the list price I get the item. Sometimes I can haggle the price down but the listed price is always accepted. This system of listing a price to 'get people in the door' and then igniting a bidding war makes it impossible for anyone to shop for a house except for realtors who are 'in…

That just shifts things to everybody listing their house for far more than it is worth.

The response to that is to either not worry about it or to have some entity fixing prices...

Re: $782k over asking for a house in Sunnyvale

#10
post #5

Aside: I don't think it should be legal to not accept the asking price for a home. With any other thing I want to buy, if I agree to pay the list price I get the item. Sometimes I can haggle the price down but the listed price is always accepted. This system of listing a price to 'get people in the door' and then igniting a bidding war makes it impossible for anyone to shop for a house except for realtors who are 'in…

One issue I see is: houses aren't like any other item, there are exactly only one of each house. If you miss out on the house you want, you can't go across town and get another one just like.

Edit to add: Also, it occurs to me, if you go to ebay.com you can bid at auction for general consumer goods. So there's that.

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